Regulators and academics in the United States and beyond are increasingly focused on the interaction between data privacy and antitrust, both in mergers and challenges to the unilateral conduct of dominant digital firms. Professor Erika Douglas is a leading voice in the vanguard of thinkers considering the ways in which data privacy and antitrust laws interact with each other currently and how they should interact in the future. Join co-hosts Alicia Downey and Christina Ma for an in-depth exploration with Professor Douglas about the tensions and touchpoints between competition and data privacy. Listen to this episode to understand cutting edge issues of concern to global digital businesses and the consumers who engage with them. Click here to access the podcast.
In many past episodes of Our Curious Amalgam guests were asked what career advice they would give to their younger selves. As hosts Alicia Downey, John Roberti, and Jessica Watters discovered, the answers to that question were educational, brilliant, sometimes unexpected, and always heartfelt. The best of that advice is featured in a single episode highlighting words of wisdom from some of the brightest lights in the field of antitrust and consumer protection. No matter where you are in your career path, listen to the episode for inspiration on how to lay the groundwork for success in any practice setting. Click here to access the podcast.
The 2021 edition of Chambers USA ranks Alicia Downey among leading antitrust lawyers in Massachusetts. According to the accompanying review, “She is an excellent commercial lawyer and a scholar of antitrust.” Alicia is the only solo practitioner among the twelve individually-recognized Massachusetts antitrust lawyers in Band 1 and Band 2. Chambers USA’s legal rankings are based on in-depth market analysis and independent research, conducted by a experienced team of researchers.
State UDAP laws are powerful tools for private plaintiffs and state Attorneys General to redress marketplace misconduct and abuse of consumers. But with the growing proliferation of lawsuits based on novel theories of what constitutes “unfair” trade practices, is it time to rein them in? In this episode co-hosts Alicia Downey and Christina Ma talk to Matt Sawchak, UDAP scholar, antitrust litigator, and former solicitor general for the state of North Carolina, about the ongoing debate over the scope of and remedies afforded by UDAP legislation. Listen to this episode to learn about the sources of tension between state UDAP statutes and U.S. antitrust law. Click here to access the podcast.
Many industries routinely use data collected from multiple competing companies to develop price, cost and performance benchmarks. But when do benchmarking activities raise antitrust concerns? Co-hosts Alicia Downey and Christina Ma ask John Delacourt, general counsel to an international trade association and co-chair of the Antitrust Law Section’s Trade, Sports and Professional Associations Committee, about managing the risks of collective participation in benchmarking programs in an era of heightened antitrust scrutiny and enforcement. Listen to this episode to learn about the right way and the wrong way to collect and use competitors’ data. Click here to listen to the episode.
Section 230 of the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms from civil liability based on third-party content as well as for removing such content in certain circumstances. Twenty-five years after its enactment, has this immunity gone too far in protecting the behemoth internet companies from accountability and facilitating their pervasive growth and online presence? In this episode, co-hosts Alicia Downey and Christina Ma talk to O’Melveny partner Tod Cohen, a former in-house legal and public policy counsel for a number of prominent social media and e-commerce companies, about the connection between Section 230 and antitrust concerns regarding certain Internet platforms, and why Section 230 has become such a focal point of controversy. Click here to access this episode.